


A Darker Robin

by Bumpkin



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Notfic, Sociopathic Tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 20:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8593549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumpkin/pseuds/Bumpkin
Summary: An exploration of a darker from the start version of Tim.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, this really isn't a story so much as a very detailed outline of what could be an amazing fic in my mind - I just know I don't have the chops with prose to write it myself. But I do think it stands very well on it's own as it is. I do encourage anyone who might want to expand on the idea or explore it in their own way to do so, I just beg that they link back to this so that I can read it. :D

A Darker Robin  
by Bumpkin AKA Marns  
Gen  
(Wordcount: 1,520)

Tim Drake is a quiet and unassuming boy. Nobody notices him, not when he doesn't want them to anyway. The way his parents had raised him saw that he was very *very* good at being the ultimate chameleon. This is why he can sneak around at night taking pictures of Batman and Robin without them seeing him, ever. No-one ever saw him if he didn't want them to, none of the low-life crooks, or the villains Batman and Robin tangled with on a regular basis saw him. Needless to say, he'd have been very disappointed with Batman and Robin if anybody noticed him when they didn't.

Tim was also incredibly smart. So smart that he managed to figure out who Batman and Robin actually were behind their masks at the tender age of nine. He never told, never saw a reason to since the two were only doing their best to stay safe while cleaning up the cesspit that was Gotham. He just watched and studied them night after night. He watched and saw when Batgirl joined their crusade, and shortly afterwards knew who she was behind her mask as well. He watched and kept watching as Robin grew, watched Robin leave and Nightwing appeared, watched as a new Robin joined Batman and flew at his side. He watched as the Joker shot Barbara Gordon in his mad plot to drive the Commissioner insane, while inadvertently taking Batgirl away from the fight. He watched as she adapted to keep in the fight as Oracle. He watched as the Joker took the new Robin away, and then he watched as Batman began to get more and more brutal in his fight to cleanse Gotham. Batman was slipping closer and closer to becoming what he'd originally fought against.

Tim decided he needed to fix Batman, decided that Batman wasn't going to fall any further if he could do anything about it. 

Tim had always liked puzzles, and he had a knack for recognizing patterns. He did a bit of digging and saw that Batman had only operated for a short time before he had taken on the first Robin, but that before he had taken on a young and bright partner his style had been harsher, less forgiving. Less humane. The police had viewed him as an enemy just like the criminals he'd fought up until he'd teamed up with the first Robin, then they'd become his allies in cleaning up the city. So, ergo, Batman needed a Robin.

Tim was ruthlessly pragmatic, he would see a problem and put his not inconsiderable intellect to solving it and this situation was no different. Even at his tender age of a bare 11 years old he saw very quickly what needed to be done. From what he'd decided, there were two major problems; Batman needed a Robin and that the Joker needed to be taken care of in a way that Arkham couldn't seem to manage. He just didn't know which aspect of his solution should be implemented first. 

Tim wasn't exactly empathetic, or very strong in the social mores that society held themselves to; the way his parents had raised him hadn't given him that kind of role model. His other major role models in Batman and Robin had also seen him learn a certain disregard for the rules that others learned and internalized when they were young. Tim did learn about the value of plausible deniability and indirectly directing others into doing what you wanted done, along with the old adage of begging for forgiveness rather than asking permission from his parents, as well as from Batman and Robin.

The answer of which problem to deal with first was answered for him shortly after he'd come to his conclusions. While tailing the harsher and more brutal Batman Tim had found the Joker's newest hideout. Tim swapped his focus to watching Joker instead of Batman to best figure out how to do what he'd decided needed to be done. It took him a week of watching for him to see how he could accomplish his goal. A little research, some label switching and swapping of certain materials he'd imported, and of course the use of his skill at never being seen when he didn't want anyone to see him - and it was done. Not even 24 hours after he'd made his 'adjustments' to Joker's stockpile of chemicals the Joker was no longer among the living – the blast was big enough to level several tonnes of building as well as demolish portions of the ground it had been sitting on. There was enough left of the Joker in the rubble to identify his body and leave no doubt to his demise and nobody thought that it was anything other than an accident caused by the dead man himself. Tim was satisfied and moved on to the second part of his plan – getting Batman a Robin again.

He went to New York and found Nightwing at the Titan's tower, cornered him and told him that he needed to go back to Batman. He explained his theory about Robin's effect on Batman and did his best to convince Nightwing to go back. In his fervor to convince Nightwing, he slipped and let Nightwing know that he'd figured out who Batman and the Robins were. Nightwing didn't answer then, but he did escort Tim back to Gotham and present him to Batman as the best candidate to be the newest Robin. Batman resisted but Nightwing and Alfred changed his mind. As to not lose another Robin like he had with the second, Batman sent Tim abroad to study the martial arts with many of his former teachers. While on his training journey Tim encounters Lady Shiva who consents to teach him rather than kill him, she seems to sense something of a kindred spirit in him. At the end of his training with her she encourages him to kill King Snake to 'graduate', he weighs the options and decides against it – not out of any desire to not kill, but because it's not advantageous for him to do so at this particular time.

He returns to Gotham afterwards and becomes Batman's partner, not his sidekick as the others had been. Due to the extensive training he had undertaken before being let out on the streets for the physical aspect of being Robin and his natural aptitude for detective work, Batman let him be much more autonomous than he'd ever let any Robin be before Tim had taken up the mantle. This made it much easier for Tim to implement his own agenda – making Arkham, and its revolving door, obsolete. He wasn't killing the Rogues, not if he didn't have to, but he did enjoy puzzles and the solving of said puzzles, so he studied the Rogues. 

He started with the most violent of the Rogues, he watched them and figured out the best way to nullify each one. Then, once he had figured out how to nullify them, he started to plan how to implement his neutralizing of them with no possible way it could be tracked to himself, Batman, or anyone else on the 'good' side (the other Rogues were fair game for blame though). That took a lot more work and time. Tim didn't mind that, he could be patient and make sure it was done right the first time, plus it would need to be done slowly as it would be entirely too suspicious if they dropped like flies. The Rogues were going to get quite the reputation for bad luck by the time he was done.

Tim decided he needed to deal with the six that tended to be the most lethal, it would have been seven but the Joker had already been dealt with. Now he needed to show Bane, Black Mask, Clayface, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, and Ra's al Ghul that actions had consequences.

He started with Killer Croc, after all taking care of Killer Croc was going to be remarkably easy. All Tim had to do with him was make sure he ingested some microcystin-LR, a very common toxin in nature and with all the time Killer Croc spent in the water it would have been very easy for him to inadvertently ingest, and then wait for it to take effect. This did kill him, contracting Pansteatitis tended to do that to whatever it infected, and again there was no-one to blame but Killer Croc for being careless.

The rest would take more time and were going to be a lot harder. Tim had resigned himself to the reality that most of them were going to have to die in order to be stopped, he didn't think of it as murder - per se - more like pest control, but he still had to wait for opportunities. He couldn't really justify to himself to take them out before they were taking any lives themselves, but the moment they did - well the bad luck of the Gotham Rogues would probably hit somehow.

Tim was young, he had time.


End file.
